All about muzzleloading: Petoskey shop owner explains the pastime

Using a muzzleloader is a little bit of a precise science, says Jerry VanTreese.

VanTreese is the owner of Two Knives Trading Co., a small shop located at the end of a hallway in a building on Michigan Street in Petoskey, and, since his son became interested in hunting, VanTreese has learned about muzzleloading.

A muzzleloader is a kind of gun that works almost like a small cannon: flintlock muzzleloaders have a small pan on the side of the gun, just above the trigger. The shooter places a small amount of priming powder into the pan. When the shooter pulls the trigger, a piece of flint strikes the pan, throws a spark into the powder, which sends heat into the barrel of the gun.

In the barrel of the gun, you've already loaded a small amount of gun powder, then, using a ramrod, tamped a lead bullet wrapped in a small piece of cloth against the gun powder.

The heat from the gunpowder in the pan on the side of the gun transfers through a small hole in the side of the gun and ignites the powder behind the bullet. The powder explodes. The bullet flies.

One important measure? To make sure that bullet is firmly set against the powder.

"If not," said VanTreese, "you have something called a 'pipe bomb.'"

Black powder hunting, or muzzleloading, is a way of hunting based in tradition. Flintlock muzzleloaders, such as the style described above, are replicas of the kind of guns used in the 1600s, and they come with the same kinds of trials and tribulations, says VanTreese.

One of those is that gun powder is "hygroscopic" — that is, it likes water. If it's raining, it can be difficult to fire a shot.

Too, the inside of the barrel of a flintlock muzzleloader is smooth. Grooves stripe the interior of most later model muzzleloaders like the stripes on a candy cane. While it might seem a smooth barrelled gun would be preferable, it actually causes the lead bullet to bang back and forth down the length of the gun barrel. That's partly because the ball-shaped bullets aren't perfectly spherical. There's a flat spot on one side of the balls where the molten lead was snipped off, which causes the ball to be lopsided.

The next generation of muzzleloader — developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s — is the caplock, said VanTreese. The firing mechanism is still along the side of the gun, but instead of a pan, the mechanism has a nipple. The shooter loads the gun in the same way as the flintlock, but in order to fire it, places a small cap filled with priming powder on top of the nipple. Now, the priming powder is enclosed, more protected from the elements.

The bullet, too, gets a facelift. Instead of a ball, it becomes conical, reducing the bullet's tendency to bang back and forth along the barrel. The barrel, too, has earned its candy-cane stripes.

The most recent generation of muzzleloaders are called in-line muzzleloaders. The system still uses a cap lock, but now the nipple is in line with the barrel instead of on the side of the gun.

Still, using the muzzleloader is arduous. Muzzleloaders are time-consuming to reload, and the powder creates a residue — VanTreese recommends cleaning the barrel of the gun every 10 times you shoot.

But it's this very reason VanTreese and so many other muzzleloaders love their sport. It requires deliberate hunting, and the hunter to know he or she has a clear shot within range of the gun being used.

"It's an ethical responsibility to have an adequate firearm and clear shot when you're hunting," said VanTreese.

He appreciates the connection to a centuries-old way of hunting.

"Taking game is a historical act that we've done, and it's a way of handling a growing deer herd," he said. "I'd rather harvest a deer with my rifle than my pick-up truck."